The Natural Disaster
by Umechaw
Summary: When it came to her, you just had to ride the whirlwind.
1. Chapter 1

**the natural disaster**

_**lothering pt 1**_

* * *

She watched the sun go down, eating rabbit off a stick, and thought not for the first time that life was fucking weird.

And for all she thought, her heart started to beat faster.

She was better with panic when it wasn't paired with quiet.

Panic was for your hands, easier to beat into submission. All she had now was the sky, its mess of pink and orange, its clouds all soft and sweet and edible. When she breathed in, the fresh air seemed to go too deep. And Lothering was quiet, sat squat in the midst of a highway. They camped at its edge, arriving late into the night. Looking at it from a distance it might have even been picturesque and perfect. If you didn't look close enough. If you didn't know better.

Her warhound sat at her feet, breathing heavy and awaiting leftovers. He stank of war and blood and dirt, and it reminded her that she needed to give him a bath, but she found comfort in it and his heavy, pounding heart. She was thankful for this new friend that didn't ask why, as she breathed so deep her lungs and sinuses hurt.

There wasn't much to do about the smell of an alienage, try as you might to fix it with fresh flowers and incense. The houses were dense and the alleyways cramped, and they were many. Their lonely tree permeated a rich stench of soil, dense and thick. It was meant to mark some semblance of unity with them and the world and the people they used to be, but an alienage was an alienage. It was broken, and made to make broken things.

She'd been one of those broken things. Holding onto the corners of deep cracks, trying to pull herself out with fingers that grew older. She was designed to fall.

She wasn't supposed to end up trying to save the world. Destiny didn't mean shit.

'Fuck,' she said, bewildered.

'My thoughts exactly.'

She flinched through a glance over her shoulder at Alistair, firelight playing on his fair skin. She'd been so wrapped up in herself. Part of her just wanted to be alone, but on the same coin couldn't help but feel like since Ostagar they'd both been tumbling from the same upheaval, so she chewed her mouth shut.

He was a strange commodity. A rambler, filling the void, and sometimes it helped. Sometimes it just made her want to lug something at his big human head.

She watched him stare at his boot, digging it into the dirt, and for the first time since she'd met him he finally seemed as young as she.

What the fuck did they think they were doing?

He glanced at her finally. 'Crazy first few days on the job, huh.'

She snorted, scared when it sounded more like a hiccup and her eyes nearly burst with tears in a hysterical kind of way. She pulled Hobbs close and buried her face in his big shoulder.

'I was hired because I drank darkspawn blood out of some bygone chalice and didn't die a violent, gruesome death, so I figured it wasn't going to be all daisies and sunshine.'

'Yes, well it wasn't supposed to be royal betrayal and tragedy.' he said.

'Comes with the territory I suppose.'

'What territory is that?'

'Human politics.'

'Ah.' Alistair nodded in agreement. 'I've… never been one for it myself, either.'

'And yet here you are.'

'Here we are,' he echoed. 'Saddled with saving Ferelden ourselves. Duncan didn't...' His own mentioning of the old Warden seemed to shock him.

She stopped mashing her face into Hobbs' fur and finally got a good look at him. He looked baby-faced and heartbroken. Dark and puffy under the eyes. She swallowed down that strange sadness of losing somebody before you really knew them.

'I wish I'd handled it better.' he said softly.

'Someone you loved died. Sometimes you don't get to decide how you handle anything.'

'It's just that… he kept telling me to prepare, that it was inevitable, it's what we signed up for. I shouldn't have…' He dragged a hand across his face and looked frustrated with himself. 'Sorry, I shouldn't put this on you. You didn't know him as long as I did.'

'I care that he's dead.'

'You didn't seem to like him very much.'

She felt angry at that. Enough had happened for her to feel all kinds of ways about Duncan before he had kicked it.

She hadn't been very kind to him, that was a fair enough statement. She could tell that he'd learnt how to methodically rip desperate people with little choice out of bad situations. The more she learnt about Alistair, the more she was certain he was just another victim of it. It was all for the greatest cause she knew, but she had been bitter all the same. Bitter and cruel enough to ignore the great sadness in Duncan that he had tried to show her in an attempt to relate.

He had spoken for hours on long fitful nights over their campfires on the road to Ostagar. She'd given him a wide berth even as she'd been drawn to the stable timbre of his voice, as he told her how smart and terrifying he had known her mother to be, for the short amount of time she had been privileged to it. About his lonely childhood on the streets, about his short stretch of life that felt like a hundred years.

'Being a Grey Warden might be a shitting nightmare, but he still got me out Denerim before I got thrown in jail or- or worse. And he-' she stopped, feeling childish for the next few words, he knew my mother, and he told me stories about her. 'Of course I care that he's dead.' She repeated, and it came out with a lot more bite than she meant.

Her rudeness was borne of her own pain and an overwhelming alarm for the future, but she felt bad all the same. It wasn't like Alistair was any more equipped to deal with what happened than she was, if anything his stakes were higher, his losses greater.

And he should be sorry she ever became a Warden.

'Of course,' Alistair backpedalled, looking apologetic. 'Of course you do. I'm sorry. Look, all I meant was to apologise for the way I reacted. I shut down, with so much riding on me. Us. I shouldn't have done that. Not with the Blight and... and everything. I'm sorry. I'm trying to say sorry.'

A human sat beside her now with something she was shocked to find was guilt in his face, and there was this old feeling, this wretched feeling of being lured. But surely, what he'd just managed to trip his mouth over was a genuine apology. He had the most honest face she had ever seen.

'You've managed to say sorry four times.' she said finally.

'Sorry.' He winced. She couldn't help but smile.

They watched the last of the sun, nothing but Hobbs' huffs and puffs and a fire crackling behind them, Morrigan as she fussed over it and kept to herself. She'd lost her appetite, and so started to pull the meat off the skewer piece by piece, feeding it to Hobbs and trying to teach him to take food gently. He stared between her and the rabbit with rapt attention.

When the stars started appearing one by one faintly in the sky, Alistair spoke again.

'He deserves a proper funeral. Maybe once this is all done... If we're still alive, that is.'

'Not likely.'

'But if we are, well. I don't think he had any family to speak of, but...'

'He had you, didn't he?' she reminded him, and was pleased with the way some tension left his shoulders, and his eyes softened.

'He saved me too, you know. He was like a father to me sometimes. Not sure how he would have felt about that.' Alistair shrugged thoughtfully. 'Maybe he was something better than a father.'

It made her think of her own father. The tears on his old face, his final kiss on her hair, trying to find a spot that wasn't covered in blood. The way he said "you're just like your mother after all" like his eyes were finally open. Like it wasn't a good thing at all.

'I miss my father.' she said, without thinking. She turned her head away and felt the burning sensation of Alistair's eyes on her.

'What's he like?'

She thought about this for a moment. 'Old. Serious. He worries too much.'

'Is he nice, though?' The way he said it, like it was imperative to know. The only quality that mattered.

She smiled again. 'The nicest. Mam got mad all easy but he was always just so…'

An image came into her head. A split lip, a fight with a neighbour kid, her bouncing on his knee as he explained for the umpteenth time why using your fists was never a good way to settle your issues. He always talked to her like she was better than she acted.

The only issue was that she'd seemed doomed from birth to be a disaster. Her mother had named her after the wind and the world named her after a storm.

Tarasyl'nin, some had called her, sometimes with little more than tolerance. She had liked it because it made her feel like she was so much more than she really was. A storm stopped for nothing and no one.

And what a fucking joke that was, now that she was a really big thing, bigger than she could handle. The only problem was that a bad storm rattled bones and left devastation in its path. That's all it did, right? It didn't fix things. It didn't go from a life of malcontent and forced marriages to great wars.

'We didn't deserve his patience, at any rate.' she finished, sliding the empty skewer between her fingers in a fit of restless energy.

'Duncan told me about your mother,' he said carefully, like he knew he was playing with fire. She must have given him a look that said as much, because he held his hands up and shook them, trying to fan it out. 'Don't think poorly of him. He told me, you know, as a- I run my mouth sometimes and he didn't want me to say anything foolish. I just… does it get easier?'

She thought about that very hard. Had that feeling in her chest ever really gone away? That tightness that made her feel like something cloying was swelling up in her lungs and catching her breath. Sometimes it felt like it refused to give it back. And that emptiness, always on her shoulders, always too heavy.

'Not really. You just... get bigger than it.' Her words came out small, barely there. She put her face against Hobbs as he rested it in her lap, belly full and looking up at her with the sweetest eyes, and decided she was done bonding. The air might be too deep in Lothering, but it was better than this suffocating moment.

Alistair opened and closed his mouth like he was scrambling for an apology, but she didn't want it. You didn't get to ask the hard questions and then take them back. So instead, smartly, he said, 'I fear you did a better job of consoling me than I did you. Thank you.'

She was overcome with a memory, a few words stored away in a prepubescent time. All this thought and talk of her mother made her remember it. She hadn't taken it to heart at the time, not really understanding the implications of time and bad memories.

"Even when only the big, overwhelming things are happening it's dangerous to let the small things pass you by, because they are gentle and at the end of it all, they're what you remember the most."

She felt a place in her stomach twist up inside her. This new armour of hers was starting to get itchy. Oppressive. Alistair was her superior but he was crumbling and clinging to her willingness to help like he knew her, like she hadn't thought about deserting him so many times already in some deep, dark part of her.

'I need some air.' she said. If they noticed that she took her bag with her, Alistair and Morrigan said nothing.

The one thing Sten was not at all surprised to learn was that basra spoke too much, and managed to say very little.

It was late into the night when he met her. He had been whispering words of the Qun to himself. They might have helped before, might have made sense. He was not sure why he clung to it, or tried to feel something, some connection to himself and what he used to be, but there was nothing. Emptiness, but in a rough way. Like things had been cut out haphazardly.

It was the hound he saw and heard first, footfalls making the ground quake, the sight of it bounding under the streetlamps right for the cage, a shadow of muscle. From this distance it was hard to tell whether or not that slavering mouth meant any harm. He found it didn't really matter.

Somebody whistled, and then cooed out a name. 'Hobbs! Stay close, boy.'

He watched her jog down the path after the hound. It still came straight for his cage, sniffing madly. It stank, gave off waves of heat.

She said its name once more. Sharp, not to be trifled with. It gave her a look and slunk back over behind her knees, panting. She might have rode it for all its size, and lack of hers.

She looked at him then, and he looked back.

An elf-girl. She had tears in her eyes.

She straightened up when she realised, and squashed them away with the heel of her palm and looked angry that he had seen them. Angry was a natural look on her, deep little lines at her brow made a thousand times before.

'What are you looking at?' she bit out, crying had blocked up her nose and he heard her sniff. Her lip curled a little. Every inch of her was a jagged edge, too high-strung.

What was he looking at? The answer was not a simple one. An armoured, armed woman. A bad tempered child. A very guilty basra.

When he said nothing to stoke her anger, remaining silent and still, she seemed to deflate. Her mouth opened, closed, the hesitation in her was almost tangible.

Those elf iris' of hers glowed, tinged, and the whites captured stars and moonlight and made for a mesmerising effect. She assessed him, with all the wrong amounts of fear and curiosity. The people here were strange.

The lights of her eyes disappeared as she looked out into the fields, adjusting the pack on her back with a slight bounce. Hands clenching around the straps.

He guessed her path took her across the fields, but he had learnt from his guards that they were no longer safe to traverse at night. All manner of thieves and spiders and bears. Whether she could use that blade strapped to her back was of little consequence when you were alone in the dark.

'It is not a safe path at night,' he said, despite his better judgement.

She flinched at his voice, surprised he even spoke.

'What?'

He motioned out into the darkness and she followed the gesture.

'What- who says I'm going anywhere?'

They both knew the obvious. Full pack, full armour, itchy feet. He said nothing more.

The silence made something boil over in her and she deflated with a deep breath.

When she blinked excess tears spilled out down her cheeks, but instead of making her angrier they seemed to mellow her further. She wiped them away with armoured fingers, a delicate job.

'Who am I kidding.' she said softly. She glanced into the fields and the highway beyond again longingly. 'The truth is I want to just get out of here but that would be really… bad of me.'

'And that is why you are crying?'

He did not know what possessed him to ask such a question. The way her eyes slid over him, slowly, irritably, told him she thought the same thing.

'I can't help that I cry when I'm frustrated.' she snapped, like he should know better. Then he would not talk about the way her hands shook slightly, from more than the cold. From some panic and adrenaline she was trying to ignore.

Smartly, he kept his mouth shut.

'Why am I even talking to you? I talk to too many men in cages.'

'That is a strange habit.'

She shifted from foot to foot. 'Yeah well it kinda works out, you know? Maybe being in a cage makes you honest. Last time a guy gave me a key he had been smuggling in his ass and you know what that opened? A chest full of loot. So what do you have for me?'

'Nothing.' he said, still trying to process the ridiculous story.

'No ass-keys? A shame. So why'd they put you in there, anyway?'

'Why would anybody be put in a cage?'

The way she smirked when he continued to speak to her made him feel like he had lost at some sort of game.

'Probably because Lothering doesn't have any fancy dungeons. You're, um. What even are you? Looks a little squishy in there. You're bigger than any human I've ever fucking seen.' He watched her trying to pick him out of the limited races she might have known, but knew she would never find it. His kind was still fresh in Ferelden. He'd been mistaken by many for a Chasind at first glance.

'Is that blood or paint?' she asked, jutting her chin in the general direction of his bare chest. How she could see it under the faint light of the tavern lamppost many feet away, he did not know.

'Both.'

'You do something bad?'

'There are many here that would rejoice in seeing me dead.' he said.

'Well, you're pretty terrifying. And different. People are stupid and don't know how to deal with that.'

That he did not disagree with. He was acutely aware of their fear of him. They had trembled as they marched him to the cage, still covered in blood. As soon as their priest had locked the door they had exhausted their lungs with their hatred. But even the biggest man with his sharpest sword had kept a good many feet away while they taunted him, even those that threw stones did so from great distances. Typical of these small, soft things. It was interesting how quickly anger left them without the reaction they craved, and it eventually seemed as if he had faded into the backdrop, like he was part of it, like he had always been engraved into quaint farms and a little village.

But she did not know. She had too much confidence in speaking with him and none of the hatred.

'I would probably be in a cage or worse if they hadn't made me a Grey Warden,' she said, looking out to the highway once more, still itchy.

His gaze lingered to her, and something clicked. 'You are a Grey Warden?'

She perked up. 'Have you heard of us?'

He'd heard many legends of the Wardens. Perhaps Ferelden's most honourable of warriors, for its most selfless cause.

And his usual guards were clucking hens for all they gossiped. The language was like that to him sometimes. All manner of people passed through Lothering and they had a word for them all, even more so with the war and atrocities it brought. The people of the wilds and what they liked to do to their prey, the dark things they danced for. A great battle the bas had fought had just been lost to the darkspawn, the murmurs of a dead king. The great betrayal of an ancient order.

That Warden chatter grew over the last few hours, for a pair of strangers in very distinct armour had supposedly turned up at the edge of the village that evening. If they were Wardens, then they were deemed traitors and a disgrace to the crown. It seemed an odd contradiction for all the supposed good they did.

But… her? A Grey Warden? This small thing, smiling like an idiot. A Grey Warden. If the chatter was true she'd made a mess of those bandits that had been blocking the highway.

'I have heard legends of the Grey Warden's strength and skill.'

'I've been a Warden for aboouut, three days now, give or take. I was passed out for some of it.'

He rumbled. 'I suppose not every legend is true.'

She snorted. 'It's pretty disappointing, I know. It's just me and Alistair now. We're all that's left in Ferelden. Some serious shit went down at Ostagar.'

Suddenly, she sat on the mud in front of him. The hound followed. The hands that had gone to the bars as leverage uncurled and he meshed them at his knee. He did not remove his eyes from her. The breeze was picking at the odd strand of her pale hair.

'Lothering is so quiet, it's unnerving. How can you just sit here?'

'I am in a cage.' he reminded her.

She rubbed the back of her neck, sheepish.

'What do you want, elf?'

She seemed surprised at his bluntness.

'That's a great question.' And she looked troubled by it. 'I just… I… it's not really working out well. The people I'm travelling with might be better off without me.'

'So you were running.' A statement, not a question.

She looked like she wanted to deny it, instead she just clenched her jaw. He watched it jump.

She gripped the bars. There was only moonlight between them. He caught the way her hound stopped panting and held its breath at this. The disappearance of that heavy sound made the chirps of bugs in the fields suddenly dense. Sten thought the Mabari might even be capable of ripping apart the metal cage, if he gave it reason to. Smart, powerful animal.

'I'm not made for this.'

'Everybody is made for something.'

'What? Are you talking about fate or something? That's a load of crap. What happened wasn't fate. I'm not a Warden because I was born to be. I had no choice.' His silence made her make a sound of exasperation, bordering on a snarl. 'You can't judge me for shit, stop looking at me like that.'

'You assume much.'

'What I don't gotta assume is that you're in this damn cage because you've done something real awful, so what would you know about it, huh?'

More than you know.

'Sorry,' she mumbled, hiding the embarrassment on her face in the crook of her arm, propped up on a knee. 'I'm… I'm not good. I've never been good. And now I'm putting all my shit on you. Do you want something to eat? Bread, or…'

'No. Thank you.'

'I have apples, if you prefer.'

'No.'

'I'm sure you're starving? Just eat. I have water, too.'

'Parshaara.'

She gave a laugh. 'What was that you said? I bet that was something really mean. Why not?'

'Were you in my position, would you prolong your imprisonment?'

She blinked, like a thorough examination of her eyelids. 'And what position is that, exactly?'

'I will die in here.'

She looked shocked. 'You sound so sure of that.'

'If that is my fate, so shall it be.'

She snorted at him, clearly not impressed by his reply. 'Again with fucking fate. Couldn't you do anything more useful with your time?'

'I am in a cage.' he said, on the edge of a snarl. For her mocking, foolish words. The dog reiterated the sound deep in his throat at him, claws finding the malleable earth beneath them in long gashes.

He wiped a hand across his mouth, trying to swallow his anger. This hunger was indeed making him fade around the edges, lose his practiced control. He turned his face away.

'Leave.'

She did not. The crack in his calmness only seemed to intrigue her more.

'You think starving yourself in here is going to make up for anything you've done? Just letting the darkspawn take you?'

'No.' he said through a clenched jaw.

'Then why just sit here? Are you waiting for somebody to put you out of your misery?'

'Try, elf.'

She laughed as she grabbed an apple from her bag and took a large bite out of it, the sound piercing the air. She chewed loudly.

'I have absolutely no interest in killing you. Why would I? I don't even know what you've done. But I can sure as shit say that hunting an Archdemon is a much more effective way of punishing yourself than what you're doing now.'

'The chantry placed me in here.' he corrected her.

She had the gall to raise a sceptical brow at him.

'Did you help them put the shackles on, too? No one makes you do anything, I'm sure of it.'

'You bas like to talk.'

'Communication should always be the first response to discord, and killing second. So they say.'

Her glittering eyes and holstered blade told him all he needed to know about her preference.

'You will not find much welcome here,' he said, remembering the chatter.

'Ah, yeah? Think there's enough room in that cage for me too, just in case?'

'The Wardens have been declared traitors to your crown.'

'It's a lie. The king, the wardens, they were all abandoned at the battle by the same asshole whose framing us now.'

'Scheming basra.'

'We have no choice being here. We need food. We have no coin. I don't even know what we think we're doing.'

'So you run, because your duty is difficult.'

She frowned. 'Duty.' she spat back at him. 'Fucking duty, huh? I'm just trying to survive. Like I said, I'm not good and right now I'm being something I'm not. I mean look at me, I find it easier to be honest with criminals than with my own companions for shitsake. And you're still judging me, so what does that say?'

'I am beyond the judgement of another. Though none have been foolish enough to seek counsel from me.'

'That's a shame. You seem wise.'

'It was not wisdom that led me here.'

'Everyone makes mistakes,' she said, too casually.

He wanted to call her ignorant, if he didn't think back to an earlier comment. I would be in a cage or worse if they hadn't made me a Grey Warden. He wondered if she even believed that statement herself. Was she a criminal, walking free but somehow tethered to the order? Much of the way Wardens operated was a mystery even to the most skilled Qunari spies, but it was known that they would not shirk the help of even a single criminal in a time of crisis.

A Blight counted well enough as one of those.

'So what's your name?' she asked. 'Since we aren't strangers anymore.'

That also seemed too flippant a comment. Granted, nobody else sat at his cage, made him run his mouth, stilted a conversation as it was. He had not spoken to anybody so easily in weeks.

'Well?'

'I am Sten of the Beresaad.' Perhaps it was fine if at least one of them knew before he died.

'What's a Beresaad?'

'The vanguard of the Qunari.'

'Wow,' she breathed, almost taken aback by something she knew nothing about. 'My name's Syld. I'm not of anything. Nice to meet you, for what it's worth.'

'Propriety. Unexpected. Do you mock me?'

This seemed to amuse her, as she stifled laughter. 'No?'

'Then you show manners that I have not come to expect in these lands.'

'You are the first person to ever say anything positive about my manners. So you're a Qunari, huh? Whatever the shit that is. They all as big as you?'

'Yes.'

'What's up with your forehead- sorry, damn, that was rude.'

Before he could repy, somebody shouted at them. The dog, who had been dosing beside her, was on its feet in seconds. They both glanced towards the sound of gruff voices and heavy armour. His guards were returning, with a lean to them that implied intoxication, stumbling down the path straight from the tavern.

'Hey, you there! What do you bloody well think you're doing?'

She turned back to him and made a face. 'Oof, you even got guards? You have fun with that.'

She stood and dusted herself off, turned towards them all chipper. Her dog did not share the mood.

'Nothing! Was just talking to the prisoner here.'

'Be on your way, elf,' the older of them snapped, moustache moving furiously. 'That animal ain't worth it.'

She saluted them mockingly. She threw a look over her shoulder and winked at him, and then turned back for the town.

Not the fields, not the highway. Assuredness in her step. Hands not trembling.

She was out of ear and eye sight when their viciousness ramped up. 'The fuck do you think you're doing, talkin' to people like that? You're gonna rot in there you miserable piece of-' A boot clattered on the edge of the cage, piercing the night.

Another kick and he kept his eyes on his own hands, and his mouth shut.

Little rotation and breaks few and far between had put an edge to them. This routine had turned them vicious. Antsy. Angry. The older one, anyway. Always red in the face, spitting things that made parents cover their children's ears. The younger looked on with a kind of mirthless, pitiless acceptance and said very little. Unkind times made unkind people cruel, and he was their animal in their cage. Nothing he couldn't say he deserved.

But he was still an animal they feared. And so they should.

He wondered, if and when she found out what he had done, if she would too.

* * *

Thanks for reading! Let me know what you think!


	2. lothering pt 2

_**chapter two**_

_**lothering pt 2**_

* * *

She clicked the trap down into place. Ready and tight as a bow-string, she tapped a branch at its center to test it and delighted at the way the sharp teeth slammed together, snapping it in half.

Allison gasped as if she had just performed a magic trick and clapped her hands twice at the sight.

Syld glanced over at Leliana from where she crouched, tinkering with her own and leaning in beside her. She looked just as delighted. Leliana's own traps were pristine. Her fingers were deft and did far better work, had made six to her three. It had been a long time since she'd built one and she felt clumsy with it.

'I don't know how I- it's very nice of you to…'

'Not to worry,' Leliana said kindly.

This had to be the mousiest little shem she had ever met. Syld doubted severely that a few traps were going to stop the horde of darkspawn, but if it helped with that nervousness of hers, she was glad for it.

They all knelt in what was almost a conspiratory circle, Alistair roughhousing with Hobbs on the sidelines, looking in with the mild curiosity of someone who may or may not have got a (thankfully) armoured leg stuck in such a trap at Ostagar. Morrigan lingered close by, bored for the way she inspected the invisible dirt under her nails.

'Here, let's show you how to set them again so you don't lose a limb.'

'Ah, g-good idea.'

She listened to Leliana go through the process once more meticulously, and Allison nodded, wide-eyed. She didn't look so scared of them now, a fidgety thing picking at the hem of her dress where it flared out around her knees, calming under the lilt of Leliana's words. She wasn't the only one in Lothering that walked around like their bones were rattling.

Halfway through the lesson a few vulgar shouts echoed from the edge of town, making Allison flinch. Syld strained to see over her shoulder.

'What is that?'

'The guards yell sometimes.'

'They have a prisoner in a cage out there,' Leliana clarified. She had a heavy set to her brow and Syld didn't think she had yet seen her so unimpressed. 'I have no doubt they're losing their wits just as much as the rest of us, but it is terribly unnecessary.'

'It makes me nervous.' Allison admitted.

They were being very foul indeed, disrupting the already static uncomfortable air, and whatever peace Lothering clung to. Villagers and refugees regarded the noise anxiously.

And Sten of the Beresaad was taking it like a champ.

When Allison was able to repeat the process without losing her fingers, Syld stood and dusted off her knees.

'Allison,' she said, stern, and the girl's eyes darted up, her hand already outstretched to give Leliana her silvers. 'Do yourself a favour and get out of here. Find somewhere else to set up those traps.'

'But my home is…'

'A house is just a house. A home is for living people, okay?'

She looked at Syld like she was a little odd, but nodded regardless. They left the girl with her burlap of new traps.

'I don't imagine you needed to make traps like that in the alienage.'

She glanced over at Leliana. 'We have pretty big rats.'

Leliana smiled at her like she was joking. She wished she was.

The comment had an edge of delicate curiosity to it that made Syld think she was going to ask more about the connection between a city girl and heavy duty hunting traps, but she didn't. She seemed the niggling, frustratingly patient type.

'Can I ask why it is we still linger here?' Morrigan asked her, at least waiting until they were out of earshot of Allison.

'These people need help.' Leliana cut in.

'If these people were _smart_, this village would be empty.'

But panicking people were not smart, hordes of them even more so.

'These _people_ have been abandoned by their own Bann. Who would help them if not us?' Alistair demanded.

'Far be it for me to remind you exactly _who_ you are.'

'A Grey Warden. I got that, you know, when I became a Grey Warden.'

'Suppose you look at the bigger picture for a moment and stop dallying with every motherless child and every foolish girl who doesn't know how to run when they should.'

'And here I thought your cruelty was superficial. You know, angry shell and soft, gooey centre.'

'I'm not an _egg_.'

Leliana cleared her throat to catch Syld's attention. The bickering continued on downwind. 'I have some belongings to collect in the chantry.'

'Do these belongings include armour? I was starting to wonder if you planned on helping us fight the archdemon in a dress.'

'Perish the thought.'

'As much as pink suits you.'

Leliana laughed, soft and lilting. 'This pink is atrocious, and it is such cumbersome material.'

As it always did, their fighting eased off into an awkward silence. Judging by the look on Alistair's face Morrigan had once again gotten in the last cutting insult.

* * *

Threes. Everyone always said it happened in threes. No one ever mentioned the fours, fives and sixes.

Maybe her luck was just like that, though.

And she should have known. They had been shaken awake that morning, eyes opening to the shadow of a Templar none too keen to find more stragglers desperate for shelter in Lothering. She had read the place right. He welcomed them with a warning. There was an edge-of-your-seat kind of panic that was driving people together, but to clash in an inevitable way. It split families apart. It drove people to the dirt under street lamps. If he looked at them with suspicion for being Wardens, he said nothing.

They'd cleaned the highway for them, after all.

One. One was Loghain's men, their blood all over the tavern walls. She had been angry, no mistake. Might have even killed them all if Leliana hadn't been there.

Being inside the chantry was no help. It was warm, and fretful. Quiet like the early hours. Chanting, as Syld had expected, but no smooth voices and echoes of the sappy prayers of good harvests and good-looking children, or whatever it was that people prayed about. There was lots of trembling in the octaves, fast words she barely caught.

She felt a little claustrophobic in this place of worship. Maybe it was ignorant to generalise an entire religion, but she hadn't met an Andrastian that hadn't tried to school her morally or call her a heathen for questioning it.

Well, Leliana hadn't done any of that yet, but she wouldn't hold her breath.

Speaking of the lay sister. Syld watched her return from the chantry dorms positively glowing in a set of chainmail. Where a chantry biddy had managed to find such well-maintained armour and make it look like a second skin, Syld was entirely too curious. Leliana got caught up with a conversation with Bryant, one of the least stuffy Templars. Lothering might have fallen into chaos if it hadn't been for Ser Bryant and the revered mother, all of them dangling over a chasm that promised darkspawn and eventual annihilation.

How often her mind seemed to stray to the extremes.

She might have tried uniting with Morrigan in that moment for the way she looked just as uncomfortable in these confining walls, except the witch's eyes were like daggers and her tongue just as sharp, and she kept herself off to the side.

Templars. Templars everywhere.

'Syl, do you have a moment?'

Chewing on a hangnail, and glad for the reprieve of Leliana and Bryant's borderline flirting, she allowed herself to be beckoned by Alistair.

He stood by a man. Unshaved, ragged and weather worn, the lushest set of eyelashes she had ever seen on a man.

'This is Ser Donall. He's a knight from Redcliffe. Syl,' Alistair's voice bordered on uncomfortable. 'Do you still have that locket we found on the highway?'

She shared an uneasy look with Alistair, and started to sling her pack around to her front, digging through it.

'My fellow knight Ser Henric was supposed to meet me here, days ago.' Donall said, quietly.

'If this is the same Henric, then your friend is dead. He, um, he had _this_—' She dug around in her pack, found the token and the note, wrapped in a shoddy bundle of cloth she'd rustled up, and held her hand out. Alistair winced at her bluntness. '—on him.'

Donall, still recovering from the verbal slap, gently took it from her and unbound the cloth.

'He is dead,' he said, flat, the air leaving his chest. 'His locket? And a note… something, something about a scholar. Maker's Mercy… ah, thank you my lady. I would never have known otherwise. I dread to think how many of us have met similar fates on this mad quest.'

'I'm really sorry about your friend.' she said honestly.

'Thank you.'

'And we killed most of the shithead bandits that did it.'

Donall blinked, looked around, maybe to see if the Maker was going to smite her where she stood and whether or not he was in the splash zone. None of the priestesses seemed to hear.

'Well… thank you, my lady.' He _did_ look a little better for it. She reasoned that if somebody had killed her friend she would either want to deal with them herself or be told they were already rotting on the ground. They had seemed a simple enough ragtag bunch of idiots capitalising off the panic, and in retrospect they had chosen their victims poorly in them. One grieving Templar, one Wild Witch. And she, well. Some unchecked bloodlust. A thing for hearing dirtbags beg for their lives. Now she felt bad for letting some of them live.

'What even brings you here, Donall? Anyone in their right mind is fleeing the darkspawn.'

'I fear the Arl has fallen gravely ill.'

Alistair responded interestingly to that. Shocked to the point that he mouth fell open, some kind of panic that reminded her of the way he had responded to Duncan's death. At that point in time Syld, on the occasion shrewder than most gave her credit for, could only wonder why the dwindling life of some Arl could make him so uneasy, and it further highlighted how little they knew about each other.

'If the Arl is sick, ser, what are you doing here?'

'By order, every knight in Redcliffe has gone in search for the Urn of Sacred Ashes. It is said that Andraste's Ashes can cure any illness. But I fear we are chasing a fable. With each day, my hope dims.'

She tried not to snort. It amounted to nonsensical supersticion, but she had seen a lot of things in the last few days that defied nonsense, much of it had become her harsh reality. There _could_ be an Urn out there, filled with the Ashes of the… Maker's bride? What a load of shit.

'We desperately need to see the arl.' Alistair said.

'Is that so? And what business would you have with him?'

Her hackles rose before she could stop them. 'Besides the mounting darkspawn threat? Oh, just to see the sights of Redcliffe from his tower, maybe. I assume he has a tower.'

'I… beg your pardon, my lady. I meant no suspicion on my part.'

'Forgive my _rudeness_.' The word was punctuated with a look her way. 'This is Syld, the latest member of the Grey Wardens. The Teyrn has named us traitors, Donall. We need Eamon's support.'

'Yes, well, whatever Loghain has done, the arl's health is my only concern at this point in time.'

'You know he's probably got his slimy fingers stuck in that business, though.' Syld interjected.

Both Donall and Alistair looked at her with veritable confusion.

'You don't think it's a _spectacular_ coincidence that he's fallen ill around the same time Loghain left the king for dead, do you?'

The implications of her statement dawned on both of them and she had to stop herself from rolling her eyes.

Alistair dragged a hand over his mouth, suddenly distraught. 'If he _had_ planned that… if he had planned that _before_ abandoning the King…?'

Donall sighed, weary. 'Such thoughts do not sit well with me. I must return to Redcliffe soon, to tell the arlessa that this is a quest of desperation and nothing more. Perhaps I can pass on this knowledge, though I hope desperately it is not true. I best be on my way. Farewell Alistair, my lady, you have been most helpful. I am glad you live.'

'Good luck,' Alistair offered, as Donall gathered his things and made a haste exit past them, grasping and shaking Alistair's shoulder in farewell as he did so. He stared after Donall for a long, troubled moment.

'What was all that about?'

Alistair blinked, settling his eyes back to her and the look she was giving him. Cat-eyed now, and very curious.

'What do you mean? I haven't seen Donall in quite a while.'

'Do you know him?'

'Um…Donall?' he said, mildly confused.

'No. Eamon.'

Alistair scratched the back of his head. 'Yes, I did.'

'That might have been useful information to us, don't you think? He'll take us more seriously if he has a friend amongst us. At the very least we won't get thrown straight into prison when we arrive at Redcliffe.'

'Yes, well… I wouldn't know about that.' He nodded in another direction, looking like he wanted to take flight. 'Shall we press on? Being in the chantry is making me… _itchy_.'

With that, she couldn't agree more.

On their way back to steal Leliana from Ser Bryant, she felt a frantic tug on her arm.

'_Ohhh, _Maker.'

Alistair pointed towards Morrigan and a Templar. He had a hand on his blade.

Two.

Morrigan looked out of place. She didn't exactly give off waves of rainbow and sunshine at the best of times, and she had a sourer tongue than most, but she was not stupid enough to start a confrontation surrounded by those that hunted down apostate mages for a living.

When the Templar took an unnecessary step towards her, instinct kicked in and Syld stomped between the two of them and shook Alistair off when he tried to stop her. She all but rounded on the templar, and went up to the tips of her toes to make him flinch back.

'What do you think you're doing?' she demanded.

'Stay out of Templar business.'

'Oh, stay out of it? While your eyes linger overmore?' Morrigan sneered at him.

'We want no trouble here.' he said, all muffled by his great, stupid helm.

'You're threatening my friend.'

'I know what your _friend_ is-'

'_What_, an innocent bystander? She's just standing here!' Syld challenged.

Alistair entered the dispute with his hands raised, trying to calm the tension. 'Hey now. This doesn't have to be a thing.'

'Look at him! He's got a hand on his weapon. He's _making_ it a thing.'

'Come on, can you blame him? It's Morrigan. She's terrifying.'

Morrigan looked as if she'd never received a better compliment.

'Listen, ser, we were on our way out anyway-'

'Are you threatened by us?' Syld interrupted him, her tone goading.

'Hardly,' the Templar scoffed.

'Then mind your own fucking business.'

'Syld!' Alistair said, exasperated.

'Get her in check,' the Templar warned him, completely looking over her head.

She bristled at that. 'He's not my keeper.'

'Leave it, Syld.' She could here the plea in Alistair's voice, felt another hand on her arm.

'Maybe you need one.'

'Excuse me?'

'Don't you know your kind last longer with manners?'

Alistair swore under his breath. His grip tightened, maybe at the sound of her fists clenching so hard that her armour started to creak.

'My kind? _They_ do, do they?' she said, quietly. 'If I wasn't a Warden I'd-'

'You're lucky Ser Bryant has stayed our weapons, Knife-ear.'

She could tell it just slipped out. Just his eyes, bulging that little bit, what little she could see. The stutter that followed.

Didn't change a thing.

She wasn't exactly sure how it had escalated to the point where she'd threatened to jab out the templar's eyeballs because _trust me, I've done it before_, but by that point Alistair had an arm about her waist, the Revered Mother was kicking them out, and they'd all agreed that moving forward Tarasylde would not be heading negotiations.

The chantry yard was in an uproar, but not because of her. A Chasind man was screaming at the top of his lungs and a crowd had gathered about. Hobbs was barking, vicious and deafening at the sight of her struggling in Alistair's arms, shouting to be put down.

Alistair deposited her on the ground.

'Calm down,' he said bluntly. 'And calm _him_ down.'

She crouched on her toes immediately, attentions turning to Hobbs. She held him close to stop him from jumping about. She could feel the eyes of people staring, tried to ignore them and cooed an apology until he quietened once more, and she breathed deeply to cool her boiling blood.

She tried to pretend like they weren't talking about her. Leliana and Alistair speaking quickly to Ser Bryant and the revered mother, taming their concerns about allowing such a woman like _her_ to remain unchecked in Lothering.

_She's been through a lot. She's young. She's..._

Three. Fucking three.

She was entirely caught off guard when the large Chasind man began screaming at her instead, casting a shadow over her and Hobbs. It set him off again immediately, and she had to put her hand at his hackles and ease him back.

'This elf! Can you not see the vile blackness that fills her!'

'Please! Stop!' somebody begged. 'You're scaring the children talking like that!'

'They should be! Better to slit their throats now than let them suffer at darkspawn hands!'

The crowd was growing, from his spectacle and hers. They cried for him to stop. And still Hobbs barked, setting off the shrieks of a newborn.

It was too much.

'_Hobbs_,' she snarled, and the hound instantly fell silent and put his nose to the ground. She whirled on the Chasind as she stood, her head still full of foul anger, and gave him a hard shove to make distance between them. 'What the _fuck_ are you doing? Why are you trying to scare these people, man?'

'They should be! Should be scared! The darkspawn are upon us, they are all dead! Every last woman and child, dead!' he cried, heading whipping around to eye each and every villager. He grabbed for her arm and she flinched away, threatened him with a fist. 'You… _you_! You will be the first of those who would destroy us! I can _smell_ it, foul, evil, evil evil.'

'You need to- you need to _stop_, okay.'

'I will not be silent! I watched the black horde descend on my people! Darkness swallowed the marshes whole,' he wailed, so close she felt spittle hit her cheek, could see the shadows were heavy under his eyes, veins in his neck thick and stark. He looked at her with a haunted kind of desperation.

Tears streamed down his face.

'Your… people died.' she echoed.

He stared at her so long she thought he couldn't comprehend her. And then an awful sob wracked him. 'My family…' he gasped, voice brittle like glass, too quiet for the bellows he was capable of.

And then he started to crumple. A slow descent to the ground at her feet.

All at once she felt numb, cold, the anger gone from her. Looking around she saw the fear in everyone's faces, fear of this broken man. Fear of her.

Very slowly she crouched to meet his gaze. She tried to be steady. She tried to let him know that she saw him, heard him.

'What happened?'

'My clan…' he continued, 'all of them… butchered. Those creatures butchered them. We cannot escape them. We cannot escape!'

'Hey,' she hushed, as his voice started to rise again. 'You escaped, didn't you?'

'I… I ran… I ran, listening to the sounds of my wife's screams. I ran as they dragged her off.' He reached again, so slowly and gently this time that she let him. She held her breath as he pinched a few strands of her hair between his fingers, trembling. 'She had hair the same colour as yours. Maybe a… maybe a little more… curl. So big. Wild and-' his voice caught in his throat.

'I'm sorry.' she said. 'Truly, I am.'

He cried deeply then, so deeply she had to remind him to breathe.

She had heard many stories of the Chasind, the type you tell over campfires in the woods. A tale of savages that one wouldn't want to stumble upon in said woods. Because they could be vicious, and they could make you suffer.

She looked about and saw that people simply did not understand him.

He moaned quietly. 'I… I should not have come here. I should not have come.'

They sat crouched low to the ground for a long time until he cried himself out. She stood as he did and was startled when he left without another word, and she had a mind to follow him, terrified of what he was going to do. Instead she remained still, and helplessly watched his retreating back. He went in too straight an aimless line.

The silence left in his wake was tangible.

'We're all dead. We're all gonna die.' someone said, hopelessly.

Already there was a burst of mutterings, another wave of despair, but Syld had no mind for it.

'Stop it, the lot of you.' she said, sounding too gruff, and she tried to pretend it wasn't because the Chasind had left her throat all tight. 'You all have better things to do.'

'And why should we listen to the likes of you? We just saw you get tossed from the chantry! You're no better than that Chasind savage.'

She looked about for her companions. She finally noticed the many eyes on her. Alistair, patting Hobbs down. Morrigan, her gaze unreadable. Leliana stood with the revered mother and Bryant up the steps, looking grim upon the spectacle.

'Maybe I'm not.' she agreed, digging the heel of her palm into her eye socket, trying to reach the place where her head ached suddenly.

'There's no hope for any of us.'

'Of course there's hope.' she said firmly, her voice rising so the entire crowd could hear. 'It's only when you lie down and give up that you have no hope, so stop talking like that fucking doomsayer, and keep moving, and don't give up.'

Another murmur rippled through the crowd, but it was decidedly more positive than the last.

Syld glanced over, just as the Chantry doors were shut on her for good. She excused herself from the growing enthusiasm of the crowd to meet with the rest of her party.

There was a moment of awkward silence that followed, as nobody was quite sure how to proceed after such a spectacle.

She knew. Her body did, at least. She turned away from them, feet already taking her out of the yard, brisque. No one called out for her and she wasn't sure if that was better or worse.

She kept walking and kept thinking of his face, talking about a dead wife, reliving it.

She walked as far as the cage before she stopped to even consider what exactly her plan was. Distance? Time? _Escape?_

The Qunari?

He sat squashed at the bottom of the cage, not that she expected anything different. She opened her mouth to speak but instead took a squeaky inhale at the sight of him. For some reason it had been easier at night to process just how big he was. A great hulking thing, head bent, eyes closed.

'Hey.' she said, shaking off her nerve and walking closer.

His eyes remained closed, giving no indication that he had heard her.

She froze again when she noticed there was very little movement in that big chest of his.

'Shit, are you dead?'

His eyes opened in an instant. Underneath that heavy set brow they were like pinpricks. Bright, strange. She hadn't noticed it as much last night. Glittery came to mind before she banished it, because she realised she was still just gawking at him like an idiot.

'Not dead,' she breathed.

'You are crying again.' he said.

She couldn't even find it in herself to be mad or deny it. She knew how red her face must be. 'Yeah.' she agreed. _I just royally fucked up again, Sten of the Beresaad._

It was just too bad that everyone but her had to be surprised about that. In truth she had amounted to little more than a thief and alienage reject in Denerim. She was no liberator.

She sniffed. 'So, um, you're still a scary fucker in the daylight, aren't you.'

'I am not here to amuse you, elf.' It sounded like a warning, albeit a tired one. His voice was deep, his accent making the words hard and biting.

'I'm easily amused, to be honest.'

He studied her for a long, unnerving, unblinking moment, and she had to stop herself from flinching back when he grappled with the iron bars and unsurely found his feet.

He towered over her.

The step she took back was instinct alone.

Her neck was craning now. If there was anything that could drive the hoards away it was gauging the full spectrum of his height.

He was terrifying, truly. Built of thick muscle, neck almost like the trunk of a tree. Some alien gauntness in the grey of his flesh. A strange crest at his forehead. The spatter of red on his chest was stark in the daylight, old and crumbling and almost gone in some places.

She muttered under her breath, cleared her throat for confidence. 'So, ah, Qunari, right? Did I say that-'

'What do you want, Warden.'

She frowned, chewed on her bottom lip and felt foolish and desperate. 'I just… I saw you, and our conversation really helped last night so I thought-'

'Hey! Back away from the cage if you know what's good for you!' Two guards from the night before swooped in on her.

The younger one eyed her suspiciously. '_You_ again. What do you want?'

'I was just having a few more words with the Qunari.'

'What are you playing at?'

'I'm not playing at anything.'

'Just a "few more words" with this blighted animal here. Right. You gotta be raving mad.'

'I can handle him.'

The elder of them snorted, rustling his moustache. 'Oh you _can_, can you? You even know what he done? Look at her, Holt, she doesn't even know. You dumb girl. He's a Blighted child-killer.'

_Four._

She froze. 'What?'

'That's right.'

She gave him a sidelong glance, hoping to give the Qunari a chance to deny it. He did not. He stared, silent, grim. Accepting. She felt ill.

'Killed 'em with his bare hands. Still wanna chat, huh? Piss off, girl.'

She didn't even notice Hobbs until he made a deep noise from behind the guards that made everyone visibly flinch. The others were not far in the distance.

'My dog doesn't like the tone you're taking with me.' she said, but too quiet. She didn't look at the Qunari again.

She ignored the guards as she barged passed. The one she knocked into called her something awful but then held his tongue when Hobbs reiterated that dangerous noise again.

Still numb, she met her party halfway.

'I feel like you need a leash or something,' Alistair said.

''Tis possible she might just chew right through it.'

'Sorry,' she said quietly.

Leliana and Morrigan shared a glance. Alistair remained oblivious.

'Syl, what is your obsession with befriending blighters locked in cages?' he demanded. 'Something tells me this one's not going to pull a key out of his sphincter. You really shouldn't have been talking to him.'

There was an uncomfortable charge in the air, and Leliana and Morrigan shrank back out of the confrontation. She felt Hobbs bow into her, showing teeth. She hated this back and forth. They acted uncoordinated with each other, new and fresh, like strangers.

_They were._

'I know.' she said, putting a hand on Hobbs to soothe him.

'Right, well…' Alistair trailed off, not expecting her to have agreed. 'What did he do, anyway?'

She glanced at Leliana, who looked terribly sad. 'The revered mother said he slaughtered an entire family. Even the children.'

Felt her stomach drop at that, a sick feeling that went all the way to her toes. She looked at Alistair, whose mouth formed a grim line. There was nothing smug about him at that moment.

Her eyes strayed back to the cage. He stood very still, eyes closed, unmoving. From this distance, she barely caught the breath in his chest.

She had befriended him so easily. She was a fool.

'Was it some kind of...? Was he attacked?'

Leliana sighed. 'I do not know the details, only that it was a massacre. He is a strange man. Did you know, he waited days for the knights to arrive? He put up no fight when they restrained him.'

And there it was. The disconnect. There was no way the Lothering guards could have detained someone like him. He was possibly the most enormous man she'd ever seen. Beast. Qunari. He had hands like a brute, arms like he'd lugged big things around all his life, possibly a sword that he was quite sufficient in cleaving things in half with. Those rusted cage bars would be nothing to him. And yet he had spoken so reservedly. Aware of his crimes. At ease with his punishment.

Kind to her, in his way.

'Are you alright, Syl?'

The incident in the chantry seemed so far away now that she almost thought Leliana meant...

'I'm fine.'

She had calmed down enough then to realise her anger had gotten the best of her. Hindsight and all that. She thought Leliana would be disgusted with her for bringing such violence and foul language into her Maker's house. Instead she tutted, and made Syld feel like a child. She didn't know what was worse. She'd always hated the way her father had reprimanded her like that.

'Well…' Leliana said, too lightly for the heavy atmosphere. 'Shall we take another look over the Chanters board?'

Alistair looked unsure. 'Think they'll want to pay us anything after… _that_?'

'It is desperate times. I'm sure they'll forgive a bit of bad language.' Leniana waved his concern off.

'Syld threatened to gouge his eyeballs out.'

'But I didn't, did I?' Syld snapped at him, making him flinch. It was the first rush of blood again, coming back to herself.

'Who knows what you might have done if I hadn't dragged you out.'

'You don't think you overreacted a bit, no?' Leliana suggested.

She was not made for this. She was no commander. The idea of duty had always been an abhorrent one. Now she felt it all digging into her, this expectation, this eyeglass fixed on all her flaws. The very big one being that she'd never had much patience for a man with authority and that the anger in her didn't need much to spark it.

'Let's just look at this damn board.'

Leliana still carried her old robes, spattered with blood and ripped up the side for easy access to a hidden blade she'd made use of in the tavern scuffle. She looked this way and that, and then handed them to Hobbs and said "go to town" and "don't tell the revered mother". He did the first, and wasn't physically capable of doing the second.

* * *

Thanks for reading! Let me know what you think :)


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